Chapter 2

Rang, terror-wrung from shrivelled pride: "Oh loneliest of the dead, Thou with the deeply riven side, And with the branded head, Lo, I, in blasphemy that died, Do envy all the dead,

"And, fleeing self-hood, fain would die-- But this can never be! This mortal nevermore can lie To immortality.-- Oh! hearken to my ghostly cry, Lone ghost of Calvary!"-- I was my own infinity; The cry, the echo I ...

Oh brother, with the bone-sealed breast; Brother in hope, in shame, In joy, in sorrow, east and west We know, but man, earth's awful guest, Is vastness with a name,-- Is spirit, hungry in the quest Of spirit whence he came ...

On through the void I shuddering fled, Immortal, seeking to be dead, With God behind me, God ahead, Pursued, encompassed, lost,--and led ...

God's outcasts only have their ease: But I was not as these. From deep to deep my soul was blown Like sin toward judgment, ever alone With the Eye unseen, and the Hand unknown.

Sad nature strained the leash in vain, And, flying, fled not; ever the chain Of the Fear that followed; ever again Relentless pity, guardian pain ...

Slow time a sad nepenthe brought, Numb poignance with no sigh, When body, dim with sorrow, sought Day with a dead man's eye.--

As from far off I darkly saw: I lay as doomed men lie: A lamb beneath a lion's paw, Mute-meek, that lamb was I; My soul I felt the monster gnaw, I heard my body die.

And, dumbly, 'thwart a dreader deep I drifted, as on awful sleep, Where sorrows burn, and never weep ...

Delirium reigned. Fell darkness dire, Vague terror, shapeless dole. Forever climbing ghâts of fire I struggled to a goal Where, lone upon the suttee pyre, I saw my life's long-lost desire-- The widow of my soul!

Far and far through smoke-red light I saw her beckoning stand; Anon, like a burning bird in fright, She fled with a shriek through the lurid night, And I wailed like a lost soul banned; And an echo flew like an anguished sprite And wailed in a hollow land.

Then utter loss: and there was nought. My sentience wholly sped: No sound, no feeling, sight, or thought: Yet I knew with a vacuous dread I lay a thing by God unsought,-- Dead, dead,--for ever dead ...

Slow ages seemed to have their will: And, moving toward the prime, Th' Eternal Immanency still Breathed in the senseless lime, Till a dead thing felt the procreant thrill, And shuddered back to time.

It might have been ten thousand years That over me had run; It might have been ten thousand years I had not sensed the sun.-- Oh God, how much of sin that sears, How many, many bitter years Till soul from dust be won? Oh Lord of Light, make sweet their tears Who never see the sun!-- ...

Mean as the dust, through the volant vast Flung like chaff, as ashes cast To the nether storms, I sank, pride past, On the waiting wings of the First and Last ...

Slowly, slowly came the grey Where all was dark before. Some monster left its mangled prey Because the night was o'er: And, sick beside an Indian shore, I knew that it was day--

And strangely cared. Some cloudy pain Seemed from my being rolled. Afar upon a misty plain The grey was turning gold. I slept, and dreamt of rustling rain On leaves in summers old.

And faintly in my dream the corn Shook under English skies; To wreathe with silvery song the morn I saw the laverock rise; And I saw the Dead by a snow-white thorn, Touched with the blush of a mounting morn, Singing in paradise; And a seraph blew on a golden horn; And I saw with a mild surmise

White shapes pass panoplied from war In fields to sense unknown; And over them a targe-like star Blazed in its heaven alone; And a chant of joy was blown afar; And a soul-name rang 'neath that blinding star, Which deep in a world crepuscular My spirit knew for its own. Then I turned, for the star-gleam dazzled my eyes, And woke with a glad surprise!--

Woke with the earth-breath on my face. The sunbeams filtered through A tamarind in a stilly place; I saw the brazen blue: And suddenly Christ's healing grace Fell round like holy dew.

And kindly faces passed and smiled; And gentle voices spoke; And, wondering like a waking child, The night within me broke, And from a heart grown reconciled Went heavenward like thin smoke.

On all the bounds of ranging sight The lifting gloom was riven. The terrors of abysmal night Fled like hushed horrors fly from light By dawn's winged horsemen driven. On the drifting hills of morn shone bright The gonfalons of heaven.

Warm winds from palm-hung pleasances Came through the lattice bars With scents and murmurous harmonies; Like splintered scimitars The moonbeams through the banyan trees Gleamed under Indian stars.

And far away, and far away My heart went out forlorn; 'Mid benizons from far away I felt my soul reborn; And man from every palm-fringed bay And mountain town where sunsets stay, From sounding cities smoking grey Called, called me down the morn ...

O magic of the morning sky! O wonder of the moonlit sea! O life--the vision and the cry Into eternity!-- Eternity beneath, on high, Veiled within cloud and clod, That life in folly would vainly fly Through the nethermost deep, through the uttermost high,-- Life that is God-doomed never to die To the agony of God.

Too long to self my life had given What was for soul alone; To rob the sanctuaries had striven To build a lone love's throne. In vain we prop each little heaven While men's souls turn to stone.

The good in ill let no man scorn; The ill in good let all men find. Our knowledge is the lesser morn; Large night with stars behind Shews most. Of spirit still is born All life, all wonder; it shall bind All hearts in wisdom. Unforlorn He lives in deserts, though he mourn, Who loveth all the Kind ...

With storm gone by, from jeopardy, With loss for gain, and blindness past, Home to divine reality The tides have borne me,--home at last. Time like a silver flower doth blow And blossom o'er a subtler sod, And through the meads of light I go Beneath the golden boughs of God ...

My soul hath won to the city of love With the burnished walls of the dreams' desires; And my life is glad as a glittering dove That coos in the sun upon golden spires; And I welcome the winds of the world, and move To the music of unseen choirs.

Great powers are for us; mighty wings Toward man's proud peril speed. Life nourished at eternal springs, Beats up through star and creed, Till soul, ascendant, fetter-freed, A soaring seraph sings!...

On the rim of the world is a rosy tower Sky-poised above wide sea-foam, Where a beautiful spirit waits hour by hour, Far-eyed 'gainst a dawn like a phantom flower, Till a ghostly lover comes home ...

Ah! love is as lust till it count love lost; The soul is as sin till it weep sin's cost; O, happy is he, though he suffer most, Who wins to the Holy Ghost!

So spake old Ioläus. There That drifting, chant-like monody, Its eerie passion, weird despair, Had wrought on me like wizardry;-- Withál he moved through strange eclipse With God's faint finger at his lips, And with such tense and far surprise, That half uncanny seemed the man With cloudy hair, in human guise, So warped with age, so weirdly wan, Whose dry flesh into spirit ran, And saw with ghostly eyes.

THE RETURN

(To E.W.)

Home, O most pale adventurer, are you bound From that strange kingdom where no love may trace The life it loves to its abiding place, Or hail it from afar with cheerful sound. From deeps whose marges mortal ne'er hath found You steal, and we are awed before your face-- For you are weird with wonder, with the grace Of death's most delicate lilies are you crowned.

After the ranging sunset of Farewell-- When life's loved country fades, and hope is lorn, Is it not fair from that dim, tideless bourn To drift back home to man's own star and dwell Fondly with time, in tune with bud and bell, With midnight's shimmer of stars and the sheen of morn?

THE SOUL AND THE SEA

I hear the shouting of th' exultant sea, Its reel and crash along the shuddering strand; Through muffling mist the wide reverberant land In thunderous labour laughs exultantly; The wrestling wind's tumultuous revelry Whips into whirling clouds the blanched sea-sand; The primal powers in grim convulsion grand Strive, straining agonists, frenzied to be free.

And in the lapses of the roaring gale I hear the cries of lives that rage and weep, That sow for ever, and that never reap; Brave hearts that travail with all hopes that fail Break with the breakers; with a wandering wail Flies sorrow with white lips along the deep.

NATIONS ESTRANGED

THE VOICE OF THE MILLIONS

Bound to one triumph, of one travail born, Doomed to one death, in one brief life we moil; The pangs that maim us and the powers that spoil Are common sorrows heired from worlds outworn. Alike in weakness, time too long hath torn Our mother, Patience, and our father, Toil. Brothers in hatred of the fates that foil, Say not in vain we murmur and we mourn!

O, by the love that lights our mothers' eyes, By hearth and home, by common hopes and fears, By all sad sweetness of the human years, Partings, and meetings, by our infants' cries-- One are we, through the heart's divine allies, In long allegiance to eternal tears!

THE PASSING-BELL

AN IMPRESSION

A roaring furnace, and a passing-bell; Grim vitreous gloom, and one low, raking gleam From a spent sun that spills its passive beam Athwart a smouldering city. Comes the smell Of sweat and labour. The sad, sullen knell _Boom_s in the brain. As in a baleful dream A panting siren, veiled with hissing steam, Shrieks like a _loom_ing horror deep in hell.

A flaccid flood of faces, blanched with _doom_, And raucous cries from out a blinking dark Crowd on the callous dusk. With haunting _bark_ Death hunts his hapless victims. Heaven's sick _bloom_ Swoons in the frost. Through droning twilight--hark! The slow, thick, ominous burden of the _tomb_.

CONDEMNED

_FIAT JUSTITIA: FIAT LUX_

Our deeds avail not; and our dreams are thrust Into the dark and wither from the sky. We live in duress, and to sweetness die; And lo! our guerdon is the world's distrust. Yet have we dreamt of judgment that is just, And seen a splendour trailing from on high; From mean abortion mounts our piteous cry: "Out of the dust, O Christ! out of the dust!"

We are as leaves within the winter gale, And are through tribulation darkly driven; And all the promise that the prime hath given Is as faint smoke before the winds that wail. Wan from the drowning pools of bitter bale Our futile faces front the hush of heaven!

TO AMERICA

I.

Thou of the starry wing, that canst not soar, Confuséd power, still seeking, still unblest; For ever clutching to a braggart breast The hope portentous and the worldling's lore. Furiously futile, with a raucous roar Thy dizzy moments mock th' eternal quest; To feverish ends, by factions fierce distrest, Toiling, a sanguine Titan evermore,--

America!--Ah, burthen of the mind!-- Cradled in truth, and 'mid distractions born To pure emprise on that despotic morn When freedom yearned along the westering wind, And tyranny, that hound among the blind, Bayed toward the deep where faith went forth--forlorn.

II.

Thou who didst dare th' unknown, precarious sea, And down the unbounded winds adventurous roam, Searching the world's horizons for a home, A haven for the heart of liberty:-- Boaster of freedom, found no longer free, What vaporous phantom from time's ocean-foam Blurs the translucence of th' eternal dome Where sang the burning stars that beckoned thee?

Thy heart hath caught the siren's doom-sweet cries, And sips oblivion at fond Circe's nod. Oh! for a seer whose soul is lightning-shod, To stand imperial 'gainst th' impervious skies, As Lincoln stood, with brave heaven-gazing eyes, To appeal from guile's impermanence to God!

TO ITALY

I.

Italia, seated by the sapphire sea, Crooning of summers rich from long ago, Dreamer mid dreams, thy peerless face aglow With rare romance and passionate poesy; Hath time's delirium taken even thee, Mother of Petrarch, Raphael, Angelo? And dost thou purblind speed to weltering woe, Dead to the wonder that was _Italy_?

Farewell thy peace, farewell thy pride, farewell The roseate rapture of the radiant years. Thy breast shall nourish sorrows, and thy fears Shall haunt the olives and the sunset bell; Ah, thou shalt sigh for Francis and his cell, And beat with Dante to the bourn of tears.

II.

Italia, dowered with Asia's amorous eyes, With India's glow through snows Circassian, The Muses' love since Dorian lightning ran Kindling the west to perilous surprise,-- Crowned with thy dawn-star, lo! portentous-wise, Steps the stern pupil of the Mantuan And lowers toward moon-mute deserts African Where, stained with rapine's rose, thy honour lies.

Dim grows the vision of th' enchanted shore. Queen of the lovely and the lonely vow, Farewell. False time hath charmed thee, and thy brow Is toward eclipse and storms that rend and roar. Fond valedictions fade afar, but thou Canst be our dream's Italia nevermore.

A SON OF CAIN

By

JAMES A. MACKERETH

_Crown 8vo, 3/6 net._

SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

_Westminster Review._--We write under the conviction that Mr. Mackereth is destined to compel the admiration not only of a few critics but also of the general public.

_Times Literary Supplement._--He has a note of his own; one can always enjoy the rich exuberance of his fancy and of his diction.

_Daily Telegraph._--A true singer whom no reader with a taste for contemporary poetry should overlook.

_Yorkshire Daily Observer._--... We cannot afford to neglect such poetry--it is vital... Alive with the spirit of the new century.

_Aberdeen Free Press._--The "Ode on the Passing of Autumn"... a really splendid poem... Mr. Mackereth is undoubtedly a poet of considerable power and originality.

_The Literary World._--There is a strength about his work which is very rare in English verse.... Mr. Mackereth's name deserves to stand very high among the poets of to-day.

_The Star._--"A Son of Cain"... is a good goad for the withered imagination.... Why does Mr. Mackereth's poem "The Lion" flash the light on our sickly glazed eyeballs? Its symbolism makes the soul wince and tremble and ache.... The virtue in the poem sounds a spiritual tocsin.

_Irish Times._--... A note of his own, a passionate, vibrant note, but true and strong.

_Glasgow Evening Times._--... A volume of singular insight and power.

_Dundee Advertiser._--... The title poem has the same haunting effect upon the reader as "The Ancient Mariner." The "Ode on the Passing of Autumn" is a fine achievement.... We congratulate Mr. Mackereth on his undoubted powers of sustainment.

_The Daily Chronicle._--His work is virile. His verse goes with a ring and a tang.

_The Scotsman._--The title poem is a grim and powerful ballad.... The book will be read with interest and admiration by all who value the classic traditions of English poetry.

_The Yorkshire Post._--... He has the right to a place among those who are creating the distinctive poetry of our time. In the two pieces, the splendid "Ode on the Passing of Autumn," and "The Gods that Pass and Die Not," Mr. Mackereth attains a height where splendid promise enlarges into great performance.

_The Bookman._--... It proves him to be the possessor of a quick eye for beauty, of imagination and sensitiveness. It repeatedly echoes great work, yet still remains undeniably his own.

_The Nation._--What he has to say is vigorous and virile. He is not for dealing in the vagueness of dissatisfaction, but endeavours to make his writing an affirmation of joy.

_The Glasgow Herald._--To pass to his poems is to pass into mountain air where sane thought dwells.... His heart is in poetry, and his own pleasure in it merely as a word movement is manifest in every line of such poems as "Mad Moll" and "Pan Alive."

_The New York Times._--A virile and hopeful singer ... resonant as a trumpet-call to those who build the palace of life.

_The Dial_ (Chicago).--Clearly the work of a poet.... The volume will well reward him who ventures into its pages.

_Literary Digest._--... The longer poems have a deep Atlantic roll.... In all his thought one can feel the lift of a tide.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

IN THE WAKE OF THE PHOENIX

POEMS

By

JAMES A. MACKERETH

_F'cap 8vo. 3/6 net._

_Glasgow Herald._--"Always poetry--poetry vital with energy and clothed with beauty and at times with splendour."

_Literary World._--"Deserves attention from those who can enjoy one of the finest pleasures of the mind--namely, that process by which the spirit of an age becomes articulate.... Full of power, of ecstasy, of a fury of joy."

_Pall Mall Gazette._--"A signature which has come to be watched with the greatest attention, and welcome wherever it appears."

_The Athenæum._--"We quail before his thunderous broadsides of language... as we read him he suggests stupendous phenomena."

_The Times._--"Vigour of thought and imagination and remarkable wealth of poetic diction."

_The Scotsman._--"Will be read with especial interest and sympathy by readers who like modern poetry that keeps alive the traditions of a spiritualised nature-worship."

_The Academy._--"We have nothing but admiration for the work."

_Westminster Review._--"A poet of exceptionally fine calibre."

_Aberdeen Free Press._--"Possesses great poetic merit.... The magnificent 'Hymn to the Midnight.'"

_The Morning Post._--"Power, originality, insight.... His work is above all things virile... real passion and true imagination."

_The Yorkshire Post._--"His imaginative insight into life's realities is powerfully displayed in such pieces as 'Dreams,' and 'The Splendid Mistake.' In 'The Seer in the Doomed City' he has achieved a vision starkly impressive in its symbolism, haunting in its imaginative conception, and noble in its moral."

_T.P.'s Weekly._--"... breathing virility and strong kindness in every line."

_The Yorkshire Observer._--"Places the writer among the true poets of his time."

_The Irish Times._--"Here is verse which really sings, ideas which are fresh and strong, language which is in the highest sense poetical."

_The Baltimore News._--"Two unforgettable poems, 'A Hymn to Midnight,' and 'At Moonrise.'"

_Boston Transcript._--"Sincerity and vivid imagination.... Verse of uncommon distinction."

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39, Paternoster Row, London, E.C.

PRINTED BY GEORGE MIDDLETON THE ST. OSWALD PRESS AMBLESIDE

Transcriber's notes

- This book was part of Distributed Proofreaders' 2009 Halloween bash. - Pages 15, 16, and 18: left in variant spellings "faery" and "faëry," because there was too little textual evidence to decide to normalize either way. - Page 86: Corrected "endevours" to "endeavours." - Page 87: Normalized "Literary World" to "Literary World." (i.e. included a full-stop). - In the TXT version, the oe-ligature has been transcribed as [OE] (capital) or [oe] (small letters) - Page numbers have been retained in the HTML version as (invisible) A elements--use View Source or the equivalent function of your web browser to view them.